Paw Paw & Family Fruits

One of the few things that I actually enjoy during the summer season is fruit picking.  In my opinion the best fruit and the hardest to come by is the native Paw Paw fruit (click link to learn more).  An indigenous custard-apple like fruit that quite delectable and very hard to find.  Although, once you know where to find it you will easily find it everywhere.  The difficult part is finding them in season before it's all gone, as they ripen very quickly and bruise easily once harvested.  The other thing I've done almost every summer at my current residence is grow habaneros.

This year I have other family members that wanted to experiment and grow a variety of other plants.  During much of planting season we were plagued with a gopher eating most of our young plants.  Even when we fenced off the yard it somehow still managed to get in.  I'm not sure if it's karma but one day during the beginning of fall when I drove home I saw a huge dead animal on the road near the house.  It wasn't a skunk or raccoon but a gopher.  Apparently hit by a car, but how?  It was broad daylight, clear large road with no obstructions, and this thing is huge and surely can't run that fast.  Some birdbrain unaware of the road must have drove right over the poor animal.  I would understand if it was a squirrel since those damn things are terrible at crossing the street and they tend to always head for your wheels anyways.  But this was the very gopher I was fighting off all summer.  It had gotten fat from all the summer foraging and died a very sad death.  I felt bad for the animal and I did the next best thing, I went home, took a shovel and a recycling bin.  Went to the street, carefully put its lifeless body into the bin and carried it into a grassy field as a form of a burial.  I never wanted to harm the thing but it was sad seeing it die because some idiot had to speed through a neighborhood road.

The new planting season will be here soon. I have started germinating my seeds.  I hope no new varmint surprises this year and if there is, I'll be happy to give it a name and hope for the best.  Here are the fruits of my labor from last year!